THE SMART CITIES OF ROMANIA: AN OVERVIEW
THE SMART CITIES OF ROMANIA: AN OVERVIEW

Author(s): Ioana-Maria Ursache, Constantin-Marius Apostoaie
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Economy, Sociology, Social development, Rural and urban sociology
Published by: Editura Universităţii »Alexandru Ioan Cuza« din Iaşi
Keywords: smart city; Romania; post-socialist urban development; smart governance;
Summary/Abstract: The ‘smart city’ emerged as a complex strategy, involving different urban aspects and dimensions. The European model is currently built on six domains: smart mobility, smart governance, smart economy, smart people, smart living and smart environment. The current paper investigates how Romanian cities have implemented smart city strategies and how are they evolving from a more practical perspective. While the vast majority of initiatives are concentrated in the capital city and other important regional centres, not all projects are functional and have yet to generate benefits for citizens. With regard to the status-quo in Romania, smart cities are rather in the adaptation phase, having emerged from tensions between modern and traditional forms of governance and socio-economic and environmental goals. The aim of this paper is to critically asses how close are Romanian cities to the conventional smart city by analysing how and which smartness factors have been translated in the seven Romania’s regional development centres – Iași, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Brașov, Constanța, Craiova and Ploiești.

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